


It's a Cookie Molassacre

by FireflySong



Category: Until Dawn (Video Game)
Genre: Bad Puns, Baking, F/M, Fluff and Humor, Get it?????, Tooth-Rotting Fluff, and because of all the molasses, and thought that there was gonna be no bad jokes here, except that you are very very wrong, its tooth-rotting because they're baking, listen if you read that title, then I don't know what to tell you
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-23
Updated: 2021-01-23
Packaged: 2021-03-14 18:40:49
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,135
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28925220
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FireflySong/pseuds/FireflySong
Summary: There are three very important facts about Chris Hartley that everyone who meets him is very quickly warned about.Fact one: he loves to tell the worst, most cringe-worthy jokes and puns at a moments notice.Fact two: he has a stupid huge crush on one Ashley Brown.Fact three: he is downright horrible when it comes to baking.So he and Ashley managing to end up in his kitchen baking gingerbread cookies together? Alone? Well, that was just a recipe for disaster.
Relationships: Ashley Brown/Chris Hartley
Comments: 12
Kudos: 19





	It's a Cookie Molassacre

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Wacem](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Wacem/gifts).



> You can all blame Wacem for this. I had made a post over on tumblr about how I heard a mom saying to their daughter 'it's the molasses-ist' when I was at work one day and how it was such a Chris thing to say. And they replied to tell me that I should write chrashley one-shot where he actually does say it to Ashley. Well, this is that one-shot. Enjoy!

"How are we so _bad_ at this?" 

Chris stood next to Ashley, the two of them staring down at the gingerbread cookies laid out on the table to cool front of them. But while Ashley had something more akin to horror on her face—her hands brought up to the side of her head and being used at blinders to block out everything from her point of view that wasn't their cookies—Chris's expression was far, far closer to amusement. 

"Honestly? I think it's just a talent at this point." Chris just beamed at Ashley when she turned her head to look at him for the far too pleased way he had said it. "What? I'm being serious here, I mean, just look at these things." He swept his arm out to gesture at the cookies on the kitchen table, the amused smile never leaving his face even as Ash's tired eyes never left his. "How can we mess up using cookie cutters so bad, that the shape doesn't even look right any more? These aren't even gingerbread men! They're look more like, I don't know, little oval stars that got stung by a like a million bee's or something. Kind of like a flower." 

“So they just look like flowers then.” Despite the dry tone that Ash had taken in response, they way the corners of her lips had begun to curl up in the smallest hint of a smile had Chris giving himself a mental pat of the back in victory. “You're really, really bad at similes. Like, so bad. I'm going to need you to promise me that you'll never make one ever again." 

Chris brought a hand to his heart and gasped as though she had cut him truly deep with that comment. Even as he didn't bother to hide the wide grin on his face. "Ash! I tried! I tried so hard for you. And this is the thanks I get for lending you my kitchen when you came to me on begging on your hands and knees?" 

"I'm sorry, when I came to do _what_ on my _what?_ " 

"Oh Chris! You must help me please!" 

"Oh no, please tell me that you're not doing what I think you're doing." 

Chris ignored her, continuing on in an extremely high-pitched, and extremely unflattering, impression of Ashley as he held his hands over his heart to complete the look of begging desperation. "Those poor orphans down at the orphanage need these cookies in order to survive the harsh winter. I am in need of a strong man with a big kitchen in order to bake all of these, and I need you you help me. Help me Chris, you're my only hope!" 

He didn't get much farther then that before Ashley threw both of her hands over his mouth in order to stop him from talking. But she was struggling not to laugh so he considered it a victory all the same. 

"Okay first of all: that was _awful_. I'm honestly insulted that you think I even sound and act like that. Secondly: orphans? Really? That's what you decided to go with? Starting to think that asking you to help out was my first mistake." She removed her hands from his mouth and before Chris could get a word in, she sighed glumly as she looked back down at what were supposed to be a dozen freshly baked gingerbread men. Shame that the size, shape, and colour were all wrong. "Maybe these wouldn't have ended up so burnt." 

"They aren't _that_ burnt Ash." Even as he said it, Chris knew that Ashley didn't believe him for a second. The look she gave him, while not annoyed per say, was definitely tired and disbelieving enough that it only confirmed she thought he was lying out of his ass. "They're _not_." 

She made an urgent gesture at the table and cookies, in an effort to try and draw his attention to their failures laid out so neatly for them to gaze on. "What do you mean they're not burnt? Just look at them Chris!" She wasn't wrong. Instead of being the nice and rich, deep brown that gingerbread was known for, they had come out of the oven so dark that they were only a few shades off of black. "Tell me that you set the timer for them." 

Chris groaned tiredly, rubbing at his eyes underneath his glasses. "Of course I set the timer for them Ash. I mean, the oven beeped didn't it?" She couldn't argue with that, the oven had indeed beeped exactly ten minutes after Chris had popped them in the oven. "And before you start accusing me of setting the temperature wrong, I did that right too! You can even take a look and confirm for yourself if you want." 

While Ashley didn't make a move to walk towards the oven to double check, she did turn her head to look over her shoulder at the oven in question with narrowed eyes in concentration. And let her shoulders slump in defeat at the 350°F very clearly displayed in bright red digital numbers on the hood. "Maybe you changed it after you took them out of the oven?" she weakly protested. 

"...Okay now you're just being mean." 

"You're right. That was uncalled for, I'm sorry," Ash apologized sincerely, albeit glumly and muffled from where she had placed her head back into her hands. "I just still don't understand how we can be so bad at baking that even though we managed to bake them properly this time, they _still_ came out burnt!" 

She wasn't wrong about that either. Despite the fact that Chris had a good head for numbers if nothing else, and Ash was nothing short of an attentive reader, the two of them were downright _awful_ when it came to baking. Cooking was one thing, but baking? Oh, that was a entirely different sort of obstacle for them, though not for lack of trying of course. (No one was allowed to talk about the time they managed to not only double the sugar in a loaf of bread they had been trying to make in a shared home-ec class, but somehow forget the salt entirely as well. He still saw that never-ending rising bowl of dough in his nightmares sometimes.) That being said, It was a well-known fact among their friends and families that the two of them required almost near-constant supervision in order to fix whatever mistakes were likely to pop up. So how in the world the two of them had been able to somehow end up in his kitchen alone, without either Josh or his mom supervising them, was a mystery. 

But first, they had to solve the mystery of what the hell the two of them had managed to do to their cookies this time. So hoping that by picking up a cookie he would suddenly understand everything that went wrong here, he grabbed at one of the weirdly puffy and dark gingerbread men and paused as he stared at it in surprised wonder. 

"They're actually not burnt Ash." 

Ashley opened her mouth, likely to repeat their earlier conversation almost verbatim, but Chris cut her off before she could get a word in edgewise. "I'm actually being serious here! Look!" He shoved the cookie he was holding into her face. "It's super dark, but not like, burnt dark. The things like super soft for some reason." 

To prove his point, Chris took a hold of the cookie in both his hands, and without any fanfare, snapped it in half. Except, there was no sharp snap and the shower of crumbs of an over-baked cookie as either might have expected, it just bent unnaturally for a moment before finally splitting in two with barely any sound or mess at all. 

The two of them could only stare in wordless shock at the two cookie halves in Chris's hands before Ashley finally broke the silence with an awed "What kind of cookie abomination did we manage to create this time?" 

Chris's answer was to shove half of the cookie in his mouth and bite off a portion of the little cookie man. 

"Chris! Oh my god! Why would you do something like that?! We don't know what the hell we did to those things, they might not even be edible or safe to eat!" As Chris chewed slowly on what had once been the pudgy and swollen head, he had been unaware that he had even made a face at the intense flavours flooding his mouth. But whatever the expression he had made was, it was clearly something because it had sent Ashley into near hysterics. "Shit. Shitshitshit _shit_." Oh, never mind. The swearing meant that she had skipped near and teleported all the way straight to hysterical instead. "I can't believe you actually did that. Oh god. Where's my phone? I need my phone. I need to call 911 and poison control and your mom and oh my god—" 

Chris just about threw down the remaining pieces of cookie onto the table as he grabbed on the Ashley's shoulders, struggling to hold back his laughter. With great difficulty, and what he assumed was a minor miracle, he managed to somehow swallow the cookie without choking. "Ash! It's fine, I'm okay!" 

She shook her head firmly and quickly. "You don't know that! Neither of us have once been able to bake anything, so why would we think that this would be any different? Who knows what the hell we did wrong this time! Or what new kind of poison we created!" 

"The only kind of poison we created is for people who really, really don't like molasses." 

That gave Ash pause, tilting her head and slightly red cheeks at Chris even as she continued to wring her hands nervously. "But, they're gingerbread cookies, they're supposed to taste like that. So it means that we must have done something else." 

"Not like this, I can promise you that. Those are the most molasses-y things I've ever tried in my life. They're not even gingerbread cookies, they're molassesbread cookies now. The molasses-ist of cookies, like, you can barely even taste the spices and shit." 

Ashley bit at her lip as she stewed over his words, giving one last nervous glance at the cookies before looking back up at him. He could still see the hint of tears that had been about to fall in her panic and Chris wanted to kick himself for being so stupid and worrying her because he decided to shove a mystery cookie into his mouth when the two of them were horrible bakers. "You're sure you're okay?" 

He gave her what he hoped was a reassuring smile. "I swear Ash. I mean, aside from the fact that my mouth tastes like a molasses factory. Pretty sure that everything I eat today is just gonna taste like molasses now. It'll be the molasses-ist." 

"Can you stop saying that please." 

Chris just tilted his head and blinked at her in (extremely fake) confusion. 

"Oh don't you give me that look," Ashley backed away from Chris to give him a disapproving glare, even as it was ruined by the relieved smile she was very clearly struggling to hold back. "You know exactly what. I'm not even going to give you the victory of saying it in the first place, it's not even a real word!" 

"Well I think it should be, and I'm gonna make it one. Just you wait and see Ash, all the cool kids are gonna be saying that shit's the molasses-ist in the future. Just you wait and see! I would go so far as to say that _we're_ the molasses-ist! The molasses-ist of the molasses-ist in fact!" 

Ashley shoved her hand into the side of Chris's cheek in an effort to make him stop, pushing his entire head to the side and awkwardly angling his glasses up. It only made him laugh harder and so in retaliation he blindly reached for one of the cookies on the table and once he found one started to shove it in her face, particularly the area around her mouth. She brought up her free hand to try and bat it away. 

"Get that thing out of my face Chris! What are you even trying to do?" He was sure that Ashley was trying to sound annoyed or even mad, but her high pitched squeals as she tried to fight him off broke the illusion. 

"It's only fair Ash!" He didn't bother trying to fight back against the hand that was now trying even harder to push his face away, instead blindly shoving the cookie into her firmly closed mouth. "I ate a cookie so now you have to, too!" 

"I'm not eating one of those abominations! I'm not as stupid as you!" Despite the fact that her mouth was still firmly closed, Chris was able to understand her clearly as she spoke through the corner of her mouth. He readjusted his aim for that open space instead and in response Ashley only tried to push him away harder. She wasn't even bothering to try and hide her closed mouth giggles anymore. The sound of which caused the usual warmth to start blooming in Chris's stomach whenever he was able to get her to laugh, and he doubled down on his attack to try and get the laugh to escape out into the warm, spice filled air of the kitchen. 

"Come on, these actually aren't all that horrible I promise! They're actually kind of edible and—" Chris ceased his attacks once the realization of what he said had hit him, which was all the opening Ashley needed to rip the cookie from his hand and place it back onto the table with its friends and backing away, her face pink and the victorious grin on her face wide. The sight of which only caused the warmth in his stomach to expand all the way into his heart. "Oh holy shit Ash, do you know what this means? We're actually improving!" 

Despite the victorious smile still on her face, Ashley blinked twice in confusion. "Yeah, you're gonna have to run that one by me again. How in the world do these tell you that we're getting better?" 

"Cause just look at these! They're not burnt, we remembered to check that the eggs were still fresh this time, we actually managed to add all the ingredients, and the spices are all there even if you can't taste them anymore. The _only_ thing we messed up on was the molasses. And we managed to do it completely by ourselves, we didn't have Josh or my mom or anyone else here to make sure we didn't add rat poison or something to the batter. We're actually getting better somehow." 

She rolled her eyes, and when she spoke her bite was exceedingly dry. "Oh goodie. So what you're telling me, is that by the time we're both old and grey _maybe_ we'll actually be able to make something edible." 

"Excuse you, but these are plenty edible. Sure there's like _waaaaay_ too much molasses, and it's so semi-sweet that you can't really taste any of the spices, but you can actually eat it without immediately puking it up like five seconds later. Which is not only an improvement over basically everything else we've ever created, but you would know if you actually tried one." 

"Yeah, uh huh. There is no way I'm ever gonna put one of those things in my mouth. _Ever_. Ignoring that, who in the world would even _want_ to try these things?" 

"Josh."

Chris delivered his statement so matter-of-factly and so blasely that he had managed to stun Ashley into silence as she stared at him like he had lost his mind, but it was for only a moment. In another couple of seconds she was looking at him again with slight worry on her face. "You're _sure_ that all of that molasses didn't manage to drown the few remaining brain cells you still have? Cause why in the world would _Josh_ of all people willingly eat something we baked? He's the one person who would never—and I mean _never_ —eat something if he knew that we made them by ourselves." 

Chris gave a conspiratorial grin as he leaned in closer to Ashley, covering one side of his face as if he was about to share a secret with her, as though they weren't the only two people in the kitchen; let alone the entire house. "But he _doesn't_ know. Cause I don't know about you Ash, but I certainly never told him that the two of us were gonna be baking today." And yeah, so maybe he hadn't told Josh mainly because he really, really didn't feel like enduring his best friends teasing and sarcastic remarks, but that was beside the point. "And who's to say that we made them by ourselves? It's not our fault if he just assumes that my mom was here with us." 

Ashley tilted her head to the side just a bit, it was enough for Chris to know that he had her interest. "No... I suppose I didn't mention anything about this to Josh either. But why would we want to give these failed cookies to him when the only place they belong is in the trash?" 

The smile on Chris's face only grew wider, showing off his teeth as he laughed lowly and darkly. "Revenge, Ash. Sweet, sweet _revenge._ Or semi-sweet, I suppose." 

"...Revenge for what exactly?" Ashley crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back a little bit from him, but the small quirk of her lips confirmed for Chris that he had her hook, line, and sinker. 

"Don't tell me you've forgotten Ash." 

"Oh, there's certainly lots out there that you and Josh have pulled on me that deserves payback—don't get me wrong. I just can't think of anything bad enough that Josh has pulled _alone_ that would warrant being forced to eat these baking failures." 

Chris just put his hands on Ashley's shoulders, making sure she was looking directly into his face, and assumed the most serious expression he could muster as he said, "Those dare cookies, Ash. Those sins against nature, summoned straight out of hell itself, godawful cookies he made for that truth or dare game all those months ago." 

In an instant, Chris watched an absolute array of emotions cross her face, telling a story in and of itself. Starting from confusion, and moving swiftly through understanding, fear, horror, disgust, and ending finally on distress. And in a move he never would have expected, he could only watch gobsmacked as she turned back to the kitchen table to frantically grab at the other half of the cookie he had broken and shoved the entire thing into her mouth. 

"Ash!" The was no way to describe the sound he had made as anything other than a surprised squawk as he struggled to choke back his laughter. "What the hell happened to 'I'm never putting these things into my mouth'?!" 

"Your fault," she replied. Except it came out way more unintelligible and muffled around the cookie she had unceremoniously shoved into her mouth. Her face once the overpowering taste of molasses hit probably hadn't help matters in that case either. "Needed something to counteract all that salt." 

"How is it _my_ fault you decided to go for the chocolate ones first?" 

With great difficultly, Ash managed to swallow the cookie down with a shudder. "Ugh. That was _so_ bad. But anyway, it's your fault for reminding me about those cookies in the first place! I had finally managed to forget that that night had ever happened and all the trauma associated with it and then you had to go and bring it up again." 

"Excuse me? You think I wanted to bring it up? I would love nothing more than to forget the taste of mayo or mustard squeezed between two cookie wafers." 

"At least you didn't eat the soy sauce ones! I have never eaten anything so salty in my entire life until that moment, and I don't think I ever will. I can't even _smell_ soy sauce anymore without gagging!" 

"Exactly Ash! This is why giving Josh these ones to eat would be the perfect revenge!" 

Ashley sighed disbelievingly. "Okay fine, assuming we do give these to Josh, you still haven't explained how in the world we're supposed to convince him to eat them in the first place. I mean, it's pretty obvious that there's something's horribly wrong with these cookies. The shape, colour—and apparently even the texture—is all wrong." 

Chris shrugged unconcerned. "So what?" 

"What do you mean 'so what'? Josh would know that something is up the moment we even try!" 

"Not necessarily..." Ashley just quirked her eyebrows at him, so he groaned in acceptance. "Alright, alright. Just-just hear me out Ash. I mean, these are gingerbread cookies after all, so we still need to decorate them and shit. The icing will hide most of the problems." 

"The colour?" 

"He'll just think we burnt them a little. Or a lot." 

"Texture?" 

"Once the icing hardens, it'll be almost impossible to tell." 

"Shape?" 

"Let's be honest with ourselves Ash. He'll just assume that we are so bad at this that we somehow managed to mess up using cookie cutters. He'll expect nothing! Just normal mess ups on our end and that we're sharing the best we were able to create with our not-so-great baking skills. And then when he bites into it, it'll be a massacre on his taste buds." He leaned in a little closer, a wide grin on his face that immediately caused the expression on Ashley's face to fall into resigned dread. "In fact—" 

"No. Don't you dare Chris. I have had it up to _here_ —" 

"You could say that it would be a _molassacre_ of the taste buds. It will be the molasses-ist Ash." 

"Nope. No. No no no. We're done here. I'm leaving now." Ashley threw up her hands, and walked to the other end of the kitchen table and made to leave out the doorway there, leaving Chris alone with the counters and cupboards covered in flour and sugar and spilt cookie dough. "It's your fault anyway that we messed up on the cookies in the first place. So you can clean this mess up on your own." 

Chris pretended to bristle in affront, even as he reached out to grab Ashley's arm and hold her back. "My fault? How is it _my_ fault that we added too much molasses to the dough? I for one claim 100% innocence in this matter my good madame!" 

" _You're_ the one that was in charge of measuring out the ingredients!" 

"Ah ha!" Chris pointed a finger at Ashley, as though her point proved his so-claimed innocence instead of actually condemning him. "But need I remind you, that over the countless years we have known each other, you have always said that I can't read above a elementary school level. So if anything, this is all your fault!" 

"Oh, it is _so_ not my fault that you can't even read the simple instructions in a cookbook, so don't you go placing the blame for this on me." She had stopped struggling against his admittedly weak grasp, the giggles once again starting to take over the both of them as the ridiculousness of the argument and the reality that they were both truly horrible, awful bakers settled over them. 

"See! There you go, bullying me—" 

"Bullying?!" 

"Yes Ash, _bullying_ me again. Simply because not all of us have been able to read at a university level from middle school like you. And all of this could have been avoided if you only let me taste the dough like I wanted to! But nooooo, _you_ were too worried about getting salmonella from the eggs or some shit so here we are! So this is all completely your fault and I was just an unwary accomplice to your molasses poisoning scheme." 

"Excuse me? An _unwary_ accomplice? Oh no, that is it. If you really want to eat some raw cookie dough—" Ashley grabbed one of the still yet-to-be-baked gingerbread men that had been abruptly forgotten about when the first batch had come out of the oven, destroying the shape completely as it squished and deformed between her fingers "—then how about I help you with that!" 

That was all the warning that Ashley gave him before shoving the raw cookie dough messily onto Chris's cheek, making sure to smear her hand down his face to try and cover as much of his skin as possible. To say he hadn't been expecting that would have been the biggest understatement of the day, and he had called them 'not-so-great bakers' earlier. So all he could do was just stand there in shock as Ashley roughly smeared the cookie dough down his face, thankfully avoiding his glasses as she did so, the overpowering scent of molasses completely dominating all other scents in the kitchen. In fact, it was the scent of the molasses itself that brought him back to his senses just as Ashley turned to run away from him, laughing loudly and victoriously. 

"Oh no, you get back here!" He immediately tried to grab at her, Ashley squealing as he snuck both of his arms around her waist to try and pull her back towards him so he could try to paint _her_ face in return, but it was for naught. She didn't even hesitate to throw her elbow straight into his gut, leaving him to let out a surprised 'oof!' as he unceremoniously dropped her and she scrambled towards the other side of the kitchen table and facing him down there. 

The two of them squared off, their bodies frantically shifting left and right in an effort to try and throw the other off, and sharing almost identical wide, beaming grins on their faces. His eyes never leaving Ashley's green ones, he slowly raised one hand to scrape away as much of the now extremely deformed and much taller cookie dough man as he could from his cheek. 

"You are gonna be in for it now when I catch you Brown. You see this poor gingerbread corpse here?" He slowly waved his cookie dough covered fingers at her, all semblance that it had once been in the shape of a person long gone. "This guy's remains are about to have a new resting place in your hair when I'm done with you." 

Ashley slowly turned her head to take a look at the bowl of cookie dough behind her, and then the open doorway behind Chris, but never took her eyes off of him for a second. He could practically see the gears turning in her head as she debated all the options available to her and slowly began to blueprint her plan of attack. Chris was honestly in the middle of debating just lunging over the table to try and reach her first when she made her choice. 

"You gotta catch me first Hartley." And then she was off, spinning as she practically dived towards the bowl with the fresh and nearly unlimited ammo. Chris wasn't slow to follow, scrambling to make his way around the table and towards her, somehow managing not to fall flat on his face as as his socked feet nearly slid out from under him on the tiled floor. But he was able to reach her with a victorious smile on his face just as she turned back around with a very large and extremely dark brown ball of cookie dough in her right hand. He makes sure to waste no time in pinning her there, trapping her empty hand to the countertop by her wrist, and quickly grabbing the other arm with his free hand above their heads before she could enact whatever nefarious plans she had for him with that ball of cookie dough. 

"Aha! Well, looks like I managed to ca—" that's all he is able to say as all words and laughter die in his throat once his brain has finally caught up to the position he's placed them both in. Cause _wow_ , she's really close. Like really, _really_ close. In his effort to successfully trap her, he had definitely succeeded. A little _too_ well if you asked him. His body is pushed almost fully against hers as he pins her to the edge of the counter so she can't run away, and the wrist he's trapped against the countertop is warm beneath his hand, even with the cool cookie dough he had been planning on smearing into her hair squeezing out from between his fingers. The two of them are staring at each other with wide eyes and are too scared to even breathe, much less move. 

Chris swallows nervously, his hand holding her arm into to air next to them loosening it's grasp so he can hold onto her wrist instead. He dimly hears the soft and wet splat of what must be the cookie dough falling from her grasp to the countertop in shock, but it is so extremely unimportant right now that he can't even put it into words. Not when her sudden intake of breath at the feeling of his hand slowly trailing on the bare skin of her forearm to reach her wrist means that he can't stop staring at her mouth. Not when he wants to do nothing more then kiss her. 

And he wants to kiss her. Boy, does her _ever_. He doesn't think he's wanted to do anything in his entire life as much as he wants to do this. And, if he's reading her correctly, then she would definitely allow it. God, does he hope he's reading her right. Cause if not, then he would be the biggest asshole on the entire planet. He'll become 'that guy', the one that forces himself onto his best (girl) friend just because he thinks that he deserves it for being a quote-unquote 'good guy'. And he would rather never kiss her then have her think that he's that kind of douchebag. 

And yet, she hasn't done anything to suggest that she isn't exactly where she wants to be right now. Ashley hasn't tried to shove him off of her, or try to break whatever this tension between them is. He has no idea what kind of face she's making, if she's staring at him or around him or whatnot, because he can't force himself to look away from her mouth. 

But he knows that he has to do _something_ , and it would be so little to close the small amount of distance between them. So he wets his lips, let's out a shaky breath... 

And chickens out with a weak laugh. 

"Oh man, sorry—" and then Ashley kisses him.

She's kissing him. Apparently the courage that had all but vacated his body had possessed Ashley instead because she was kissing him. Or, well, _kissed him_ he supposed. It had lasted only a moment, barely longer then a second, but it's enough that he can't stop rewinding and restarting the moment in his mind over and over and over again. Replaying how she tentatively closes the aforementioned small distance between then, and how soft her lips felt when they brushed lightly over his. 

He's starting to think that he had actually fallen when he had almost slipped after all, and this is all just a hallucination from the head trauma of smacking his forehead into a counter or something. 

"Was, was that okay?" Her voice is small and nervous and it cuts through the fog in his mind a little, but Chris still can't respond because how could she expect him too? How is he supposed to respond to _that?_ 'Was that okay?' _Okay?_ It was way more then just _okay_. It was _mind-blowing_ , it was _earthshattering_ , it was so out of this world that he doesn't even begin to have the words to describe it. 

When he finally comes to, it's to the sight of Ashley with both of her lips pulled into her mouth. But not because she's nervous, or because it's extremely awkward being squished between Chris and the counter while he tries to recover from what has been the best moment in his entire _life,_ but because she's trying so hard to hold back a smile and what could possibly be laughter. Because while Chris was trying to work through how exactly to explain just how 'okay' Ashley kissing him had been, his mouth had had other ideas. At least, if the way he kept constantly repeating "Yeah" over and over again in a dazed, breathless, and squeaky manner was any indication. 

Determined to try and convince Ashley that he's not a complete bozo who just shuts down when a pretty girl (or you know, the best friend he's had a stupidly large crush on for nearly as long as he's known her) kisses him, he clears his throat and tries again. "Y-yeah." Ashley letting out a surprised laugh at that was the only thing that stopped him from trying to smash his head into the countertop. So in a effort to try and distract her from his faux pas, he loosens his grip on the wrist he's gotten pinned to the countertop and slowly moves his hand up so it covers the back of hers. And to his shock, it seems to work. She had immediately turned her head to their hands in wonder, and giving a small, if not ecstatic, smile as she turned hers over so she could comfortably hold his hand, entwining their sticky dough covered fingers together. 

There's a moment where Chris doesn't know what to do anymore as he just stares in shock at their palms cupped together on the countertop, looking for all the world as though this was a gesture that was always meant to happen, cookie dough or no cookie dough. But it's a moment that's over with almost as quickly as it started. "Yeah," he tries again. "Yeah, that was okay. It was more than okay, actually. It was, it was..." he wracks his poor kiss-fried brain for a word and finds one, the best and worst word he could ever use in this instance, "it was the molasses-ist." 

The change in Ashley's expression was instantaneous. Immediately the soft but thrilled smile dropped to something far more resigned and pained, but it did nothing to hide the absolute glee and wonder shining throughout the rest of her pink face. "No no no no. This was a mistake. A terrible, awful mistake." He can feel her struggle to get out from between him and the counter, but he knows it's all for show. The hand holding his had only curled tighter around his fingers after all. So he does the only thing he can do, he unhesitatingly decides to tangle their other cookie dough covered fingers tightly together and lowers their now clasped hands to rest lightly on the countertop completely parallel to the other. And after once again 'trapping' her, Ashley turns back to him with a completely fake annoyed look on her face, an expression that causes Chris to laugh as he presses his forehead to hers. He's only now aware of the fact that he's been grinning so wide that his cheeks have positively started to _ache_. 

"Oh _crumb_ on Ash, it was just a _cookie_ mistake. Won't you be _filling_ to give me an _oven_ chance?" Oh, there was no doubt in either of their minds that he was blatantly _flirting_ with her right now, not with the way he was basically murmuring each of these puns against her lips. "I promise to hit the _bakes_ from now on. You have _pie_ word." 

He wasn't sure which of them finally moved to close the infinitesimal distance, but they were kissing again. Except, Chris was now a much more willing and much less passive participant. Gone was the tentative and experimental brush of lips, this one was far, far more sweeter (and not _just_ from the taste of molasses that hinted on both their lips), the two of them melting into it and into each other all the same. 

The sound they made when they separated was soft, and only the smiles on their faces were softer. 

"Hey, Ash?" The sound of confirmation she made was more akin to a dreamy hum, and it made Chris's heart soar. "We're totally giving these cookies to Josh, right?"


End file.
